At UnWork, we have the opportunity to work together with the world’s most forward-thinking companies to transform their digital, spatial and human working environments. The question they keep asking is: how should our office work in the future? The better question: what kind of organisation do we want to be?  

Design research answers this important question. When we map real behaviours – how people work, where collaboration breaks down, which rituals hold culture together – we stop reconfiguring space and start designing the conditions for success. This is the difference between those workplaces that perform and those that photograph well. 

Culture is the first outcome. When we can work anywhere, we go to work for social interaction. Design research surfaces these moments – arrival, transitions, connection – where identity is either reinforced or eroded. Good design makes culture legible: what you see is what you get. 

Collaboration is the second. Design research shows us how work is built between individuals and teams – design then creates these conditions for connection. Increasingly, collaboration means designing for a third presence: AI tools that are active participants in how teams think and make decisions together. 

Productivity is the third. A productive environment reduces friction for different ways of working: focus, problem solving, creativity. Our research identifies the key moments where environments are working against employees, directly affecting how they think, take risks and sustain concentration. 

Across our engagements with some of the world’s largest tech, financial, legal and professional practices, this is what we have learned: the best workplaces are designed from evidence.